Forum - View topicReligion in Manga
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Shadowmeld
Posts: 1 |
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Hi guys. I'm new to the forums, but have come to this site for a while now. I'm hoping some of you may be more educated that I on manga and would be willing to give this some thought.
I'm doing a presentation on the religious aspects, or even the lack there of, in manga. I can probably branch out some and get into anime if needed, but the actual topic is just manga. It's very open right now. I need to give about a 5 minute speech on the topic. Does anyone have some good ideas or pages with info on this? I've already got a couple, Fullmetal Alchemist, and NGE. I think both of these some have obvious religious parts in them. Anyone have any other titles or pages? Thanks a lot! |
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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Both can be summarized as "take cool names and feel free to do with it whatever you want". Which religion do you mean? Japanese traditional mythology is widely represented- as an inspiration (Natsme) to part of everyday life (pray before exams in Azumanga or Hana Yori Dango). If you consider Christianity as a "religion" there are lots of titles that can be use as an example... of the fact that in Japanese popculture Christianity have similar role to Buddhism in Western one- source of cool names and motives threaten veeery casual. Marimite, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne for example. Even in Dragon Ball Goku got married... guess where. When you search for accurate vision of the Church manga is surprisingly poor. Maybe some threads from Rose of the Versailles could be useful. Meh, I've done someone's homework again. Hope it's counted somewhere in Heaven. |
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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If you're looking strictly at Christianity, Trigun might be a good one to check out to since it has the special status as being written by mangaka who is Christian. Only about 1% of the Japanese population is Christian (perhaps less than that) so you aren't going to find too much that looks at it on a level more than surface deep.
Another interesting portrayal of the Church (not necessarily said to be the Christian Church but definitely based on the historical Catholic Church) is Spice & Wolf. The light novels would probably be better to use, since they are the original, but I assume the manga has everything in there as well. |
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Mushi-Man
 Posts: 1537 Location: KCMO |
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Allot of the Christianity seen in anime and manga is oddly just kind of for looks. I mean when you look at Trigun, as marie-antoinette mentioned, it's never really explicitly christian or anything besides the fact that Wolfwood is a priest with a cross that has guns. And Eva's religious symbolism really just stems from the creator getting a random fascination with the religion and he just pulled out symbols and a few references that he liked.
if you want to find things that explicitly deal with religion you will most likely have to look into Shintoism and Buddhism because those are the two dominate religions in Japan. FYI: according to the CIA World Factbook, Japan has a 2% Christian population (shocking). Also most people in Japan will practice both Buddhism and Shintoism as a single religion. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html |
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Jaymie
Posts: 915 |
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D.Gray-man has a lot of religious aspects.
But so does Qwaser of Stigmata, which is borderline hentai. So... |
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Anime Remix
Posts: 354 |
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I remember that during the New York case in Detective Conan, religion was brought up. Though, the person was basically saying "There is no God", "If there was a God, why is all these bad things happening to me", etc.
Though, Fullmetal Alchemist might be the only anime/manga series I came across with religion... |
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marie-antoinette
Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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There's actually a lot more thematically, it just doesn't come and spell it out (so you are right about it not being explicit). The big one is the fact that the story in clearly taking some inspiration from the story of Cain and Abel. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
 Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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It's somewhat accurate to say that religion in Japan is a blend of Shintoism and Buddhism (for those Japanese who are not some other religion or non-theists), but it's also not entirely accurate. Day to day life for the Japanese is more or less non-religious but traditions and customs based on religious practices are very pervasive in Japanese society without them consciously being part of an overall philosophy or belief system.
Conversely with Christianity, spiritual behavior comes to believers consciously for more simple ritualistic actions like praying and attending church. So when Japanese rituals occur, aside everyday routine things. that's when a spiritual identity becomes apparent. For example, a funeral is almost always a Buddhist event and weddings are usually Shinto events. It's typically during life-changing events like death, marriage, birth that ceremonial customs will be carried out. That kind of puts the different sides of religion between Japan and the West in a nutshell but doesn't really answer your question about how it's portrayed in specific manga titles. But hopefully with this info and clarification it will help you reflect on your project a bit better. |
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The World We Know
 Posts: 35 Location: Austin, TX |
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It seems like you're asking for manga featuring Christianity in some form. One that immediately comes to mind is Young Saint Men, which features Buddha and Jesus as roommates and moves them to contemporary setting. Another is Haibane Renmei, which wasn't really a manga but a doujinshi (and left incomplete) whose anime features more heavily Christian themes and elements than any I've ever seen.
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Aylinn
 Posts: 1684 |
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I just thought you may find this piece of information about NGE interesting: There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us. Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians. There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool. If we had known the show would get distributed in the US and Europe we might have rethought that choice. ― Kazuya Tsurumaki http://www.evaotaku.com/html/evafaq.html On topic: You should check movies done by Mamoru Oshii, who once aspired to become a priest and whose films contain Christian themes and references, for example: Angel's Egg relies on Christian symbolic imagery - Fish, Egg and there is the man who quotes the story of Noah’s Ark, but the man's version has a different and sombre ending. He also carries a cross etc. The first Patlabor movie has references to The Tower of Babel and so on. |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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Yep, as other people said, Christian religious symbols are foreign and often cool to the Japanese. So are English words, which are sometimes smashed together to make names that sound cool to the Japanese but totally stupid over here, such as "Leopard Solid", "Jacuzzi Splot" and "Travis Touchdown" (at least Travis is a name, but the last name? pffft, but they totally did that on purpose)
That said, you can still find religion in manga, for example, Osamu Tezuka. Phoenix and Buddha in particular involve a lot of Buddhism. For Buddha it should be pretty obvious from the title what it's about, it's pretty much the life story of Buddha and it shows Buddhism in a positive light. On the other hand, the Sun chapter of Phoenix involves religion heavily in a negative light, Buddhism in particular. They show religion being used as a basis for political power. It has both a past and a future story to it that are pretty much separate, the past part is about the feudal government trying to force Buddhism on a small village who believes in local deities and religion is being used by them as a basis for both control and unification. The future part of the story also involves religion but this time as a basis for separating people into two groups, the one that believes in the fictional religion is allowed to live on the surface and the rest must live underground. The reason that I cannot help but bring up Phoenix is that in the past part of Sun, the main character turns to the Phoenix for guidance on what to do in this tough situation since he still turns to the local deities and the Phoenix tells him that "all religions are ultimately correct". If you can only use anime, the first part of Sun was animated, a few other chapters were too and you can get the whole set ridiculously cheap from Media Blasters from the Right Stuf these days. So if you want to connect religion in manga to the real world, I think Phoenix especially is great for that. If you're looking for Christianity, you might not find what you're looking for, but there are plenty of other religions you can find stuff on. Oh and I would second Trigun on the basis that I didn't get the impression that any Christian based stuff was there only for being cool. I wouldn't necessarily call NGE a good candidate unless you want to show that other countries simply find Christianity to be cool as just another alternate mythology and use it as a free idea bucket in the same way game developers use Greek mythology these days. Persona 3 did this too, it used any and all myths and religions as free idea buckets for their persona designs. |
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Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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Mushi-Man
Posts: 1537 Location: KCMO |
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Oh well that's true. When I wrote this comment I was thinking of manga that was suppose to be explicitly about God and Jesus or something like that. But thematically there are religious ties. Like East of Eden is a retelling of Cain and Able but I never really think of it as a religious novel. But if we are really including symbolism, themes, ext then you were right to mention Tirgun. My bad. Oh this manga title just came to mind, i can't believe that it took me this long to think of it, Saint Young Men. It is explicitly about religion in the vain that it is actually about Jesus and Buddha living together in an apartment in Japan. It's absolutely hilarious and some times makes these little religious reference jokes. By the way, I'm not religious so I'm not really the best person to judge what would be seen as hedonistic, but I think this would be safe to share without worry. |
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dewlwieldthedarpachief
 Posts: 751 Location: Canada |
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While it's relevant to consider the intention with which a work is created, the results don't necessarily reflect these intentions. I'm not sure about Anno, but I remember Oshii having said that his aim is chiefly to make something provocative and thoughtful that everyone watching can interpret however they will. In the case of NGE, this is not without some merit. I felt that the theme of apocalypse was quite at home with the iconography.spoiler[ Further, the subplot of trying to instigate the apocalypse is very reminscent of the movement among fundamentalists to spark the Battle of Armageddon in Israel.] I cannot speak for the manga, but it's a criticism often leveled at the anime as well that seems to have more to do with knee-jerk "weird Japan" reactions than an actual evaluation of the content. Regardless of the will behind it, the result ends up taking the mythology in an intriguing direction. The same couldn't be said of something more pedestrian in its usage (e.g. Trinity Blood). |
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timesteel
 Posts: 202 Location: California |
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surprised No ones mentioned MW by Osamu Tezuka Christianity plays a big part in the story.
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